The United States and Japan have announced a joint partnership to boost the commercialization of nuclear fusion, the U. S. Department of Energy announced Wednesday.
The partnership was announced by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington for a summit with President Joe Biden.
U. S. Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk and Japan’s Minister of Education, Sports, Science and Technology Masahito Moriyama met in Washington on Tuesday to discuss the merger.
The partnership aims to solve the demanding clinical and technical situations to achieve a commercially viable merger.
Scientists, governments and companies have been searching for decades how to harness fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the sun, to produce carbon-free electricity. It can be replicated on Earth with lasers or hot, taut magnets to fuse two light atoms into a denser one. atom, releasing gigantic amounts of energy.
Unlike power plants that operate by fission or splitting atoms, fusion plants, if ever built, would produce little long-lived radioactive waste.
The two countries will also agree on a sustainable aviation fuel in a summit declaration, two sources close to the negotiations between the countries said.
“World of Warcraft” will return to China this summer, its developer and local partner announced Wednesday, more than a year after dismayed fans saw the massive video game and other titles pulled from the market amid a contract dispute.
U. S. video game maker Blizzard and China’s NetEase have announced that a new deal will see the return of “World of Warcraft” (WoW), along with first-person shooter “Overwatch” and spin-offs such as the WoW card game “Hearthstone. “”.
“Blizzard Entertainment’s beloved video game titles that have captivated millions of gamers in China will return to the market sequentially, starting this summer, as part of a renewed publishing agreement,” the corporations said in a statement.
WoW’s Chinese servers went offline in January 2023, a wave of grief and anger from enthusiasts who have dedicated years of their lives to accumulating their problems in the game.
Chinese social media users hailed the return of Blizzard titles to the market on Wednesday, with “Blizzard announcing its return” and “NetEase and Blizzard remarrying” among the most popular searches on the Weibo platform.
“Today our long-lost old friend returns, our most beloved game returns,” video game blogger “Scarlet Bunny” wrote in a post on Weibo.
“Come back to life, my beloved!” wrote a fan.
“Happy to stand in line”
Hugely popular around the world, especially in the 2000s, WoW is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in a medieval fantasy world where evil is fought.
It is known for its immersive and addictive gameplay, and players can accumulate many hours of gameplay.
Blizzard games were introduced to China in 2008, thanks to a collaboration with the giant NetEase. Under local law, foreign developers must partner with Chinese corporations to enter the market.
But after 14 years and the acquisition of millions of players in China, the two corporations announced in November 2022 that talks about renewing their operating contract had resulted in a deal.
“After ongoing discussions over the past year, Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase are excited to align with the path ahead to support players in mainland China and are proud to reaffirm their commitment to delivering exceptional gaming experiences,” the corporations said in their statement.
Some veteran WoW players were angered by the title’s prolonged absence in China.
“The Chinese market is Blizzard’s living room, where you walk in and spend as you please. Players are toys in Blizzard’s hands that you take or abandon as you wish,” one player wrote on Weibo, calling for a boycott.
Difficult years
The news will be a good boost for NetEase, which, like many of the country’s tech giants, has been through a rough few years following the government’s crackdown on the industry.
From 2021, young people under the age of 18 will only be able to play online between 20:00 and 21:00 on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays of the school term.
Players are required to use their ID when registering to play online so that minors do not lie about their age.
It is also forbidden for companies to offer games to young people outside of government-imposed hours.
The end of the freeze on gambling licenses had raised hopes that attention towards gambling had waned.
But then, in December, a draft rule aimed at restricting in-game purchases and preventing the obsessive habit of gambling sent shares of NetEase and its competitors tumbling.
Authorities backtracked a day later, announcing that the regulations would be further reviewed and giving details.
Subsequently, the draft regulation was removed from the regulator’s website.
Intel on Tuesday detailed a new edition of its synthetic intelligence chip at its Vision event, which targets Nvidia’s dominance in AI-powered semiconductors.
Tech corporations are a select source of the few chips needed for AI. Intel said its new Gaudi 3 chip is capable of teaching expressword patterns 50% faster than Nvidia’s previous-generation H100 processor. It’s also capable of calculating generative AI responses, a procedure called inference, faster than the H100 chips for some of the models Intel is testing.
“Our consumers are asking for selection in the industry,” said Jeni Barovian, Intel’s vice president of strategy and product management. “They come to us and expect Intel, as an IT leader, to ride the wave (of generative AI) and find answers that meet their needs. And they’re looking for an open approach. “
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have struggled to produce an attractive set of chips and software needed to create AI programs that could be a viable option for Nvidia. Nvidia controlled about 83% of the knowledge intermediate chip market in 2023, with most of the rest 17% owned by Google’s traditional tensor processing suites (TPUs) that it doesn’t sell directly.
Intel used Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. ‘s 5nm procedure. to build the chips. Gaudí 3 features two fused main procedural chips and is more than twice as fast as its predecessor. The chip is designed to connect to thousands of others, and once done, it can generate an enormous amount of computing power.
The Gaudi 3 chip will be available to server developers such as Supermicro and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in the second quarter of this year.
Gaudí’s next chip will be codenamed Falcon Shores.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Tuesday that his country will invest 9. 4 trillion won ($6. 94 billion) in synthetic intelligence through 2027 as part of efforts to achieve a global leadership position in complex semiconductor chips.
The announcement, which also includes a separate 1. 4 trillion won fund for AI semiconductor companies, comes as South Korea tries to keep pace with countries including the United States, China and Japan, which are also offering big policies to bolster semiconductor origin chains on their own soil.
Semiconductors are a fundamental foundation of South Korea’s export-oriented economy. In March, chip exports hit a 21-month high of $11. 7 billion, about a fifth of total exports shipped through Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
“The existing festival in the semiconductor sector is a trade war and an all-out war between nations,” Yoon told an assembly of chip policymakers and executives on Tuesday.
By allocating investments and a fund, South Korea plans to specifically expand studies and progress on AI chips, such as synthetic neural processing (NPU) assemblies and next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, the government said in a statement.
The South Korean government will also announce the progression of next-generation synthetic general intelligence (AIG) and security technologies that go beyond existing models.
Yoon has set a goal for South Korea to become one of the three smartest countries in AI technology, adding chips and cornering a 10% or more share of the global formula semiconductor market by 2030.
“Just as we dominated the world with memory chips for more than 30 years, we will write a new myth about semiconductors with AI chips in the next 30 years,” Yoon said.
Yoon also noted that the effect of the recent earthquake in Taiwan, a world leader in semiconductors, on South Korean companies was limited for now, but ordered careful preparation in case of uncertainty.
China’s central bank will set up a 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) lending program to help the country’s science and generation sectors, it said on Sunday.
One-year loans can be extended twice, for a maximum of one year each time, he said.
Elon Musk’s X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun reinstating loose blue checks for some of its users, the latest unforeseen update that is causing a lot of confusion on the platform.
For years, Twitter’s blue controls reflected unusual social media verification badges, largely reserved for celebrities, politicians, and other influential accounts. That was replaced a few months after Musk bought the platform for $44 billion in October 2022.
Last year, X began issuing verification checks only to those who paid the initial value of $8 per month, and cutting off the verification badges of many celebrities and other important accounts. It also led to confusion, complaints, and a large number of fake accounts. Accounts impersonating someone else, adding a blue check.
But on Wednesday afternoon and early Thursday morning, many users reported seeing the blue checks return to their accounts, or appear for the first time, even though they weren’t paying for the “premium” service on X.
Musk said last week that all X accounts with more than 2,500 verified fans would now get Premium features, which come with a checkmark, for free, and that accounts with more than 5,000 would get Premium for free.
The express reasoning for this new policy was unclear. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Thursday.
Reactions have been mixed. While a handful of users raved about verification, others were frustrated.
“What happened? I didn’t pay for it. I would NEVER pay for this,” actress Yvette Nicole Brown, who appeared to be among the prominent names who saw a blue check return, wrote in an article Wednesday night.
While X’s blue check has also evolved into what some see as a sign of the platform’s new ownership and subscription model, some other accounts have even shared commands on how to delete their newly placed blue checks through configuration changes.
Several members of the Palestinian Authority also gained verification prestige for which they did not pay or apply on Thursday.
Beyond the blue controls, X has faced pushback from users and advertisers amid lingering considerations about content moderation, as well as the spread of misinformation and hate speech on the platform, which some researchers say are mostly Musk’s fault.
Major brands, including IBM, NBCUniversal and its parent company Comcast, announced in November that they would ban advertising on X after a report by the liberal advocacy organization Media Matters showed that their classified ads gave the impression of being next to curtains praising the Nazis. As X tries to recoup ad money, the platform’s main source of revenue, Musk responded with a speech riddled with swear words accusing corporations of “blackmail” and necessarily telling them to leave.
Since then, X has also attempted to prosecute those who have documented the proliferation of hate speech and racism on the platform, adding Media Matters and the nonprofit Center to Counter Digital Hate. in the middle of last week.
Intel shares fell about 7% on Wednesday as mounting losses in its contract chip production business indicated it could take years for the company to catch up with rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Unveiling new financial details for its foundry unit late Tuesday, Intel said the company reported operating losses of $7 billion in 2023, up from $5. 2 billion in 2022.
“We expected the economics of the smelter to be bad, and indeed it is,” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein. “We most likely have several more years of significant headwinds ahead of us. “
Intel is expected to lose more than $12 billion in the market if the losses continue.
The company has once again spent billions of dollars on the dominant maker of complex chips, a position it has lost to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. , which is now the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
The U. S. chipmaker’s capital investments as “construction in progress” totaled $43. 4 billion as of Dec. 30, 2023, up from $36. 7 billion a year earlier.
Intel also plans to spend $100 billion on factories in four U. S. states. As part of the U. S. Chips Act investment, the U. S. Chips Act is a major part of the U. S. Chips Act investment. U. S.
Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said operating losses in its contract chip production business would peak in 2024 before breaking even around 2027. They accounted for about 35% of Intel’s overall earnings in 2023.
Intel expects the foundry to have a gross margin of around 40% through 2030, which would still be lower than the 53% margin reported through TSMC for the fourth quarter of 2023.
At 625. 5 billion Taiwan dollars ($19. 52 billion) in the last 3 months of 2023 alone, TSMC’s earnings are also above the $18. 9 billion in sales of Intel’s foundry unit in 2023.
“The geography and capacity of the incumbents, as well as their established roster of top-tier customers, have shaken investor confidence in Intel’s foundry prospects,” said Parv Sharma, principal analyst at research firm Counterpoint.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and the Royal Commission for the City and Holy Sites of Mecca (RCMC) have announced that the Grand Mosque of Mecca has undergone a major technological upgrade to cater to worshippers.
The project, carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, the General Authority for the Care of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques, and virtual and domestically generated companies, aims to delight the faithful through a complex infrastructure, artificial intelligence systems, and the state-of-the-art impartial host model.
The task leverages the features of 5G and AI to facilitate crowd and vehicle management, asset management, and implement smart waste disposal systems.
The improved infrastructure opens the door to the provision of a virtual medical clinic at the Grand Mosque.
Using the Internet of Things (IoT), the project makes it possible to monitor the water supply and production of the Zamzam well in real time.
Download speeds inside the Grand Mosque have tripled to more than 1 gigabit per second, thanks to the network upgrade on the site of the third Saudi expansion building.
The task uses the standalone host model, a feature to provide a complex technical infrastructure based on 5G, data, and artificial intelligence. The model allows multiple cellular network operators, including STC, Mobily, and Zain, to share the physical infrastructure within the Grand Mosque, making sure all visitors have access to the highest point of communication services.
This project, implemented through Advanced Communications
Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Infrastructure of the MCIT Eng. Bassam Al-Bassam said: “There is nothing more honorable than serving guests in the Grand Mosque. We continuously work with our partners to deliver the latest generation and guest experience. »
CCMN Director General P. Ing. Saleh Al-Rasheed highlighted the project’s contribution to “providing a complex virtual infrastructure in the Grand Mosque” and “raising the level of communication services” for all visitors.
This generational update is evidence of the commitment to employ responses for a more effective and connected Grand Mosque, ultimately serving millions of worshippers year-round.